Ola Schubert

Ola Schubert (2006)

Ola Schubert (formerly Ola Bergner) (born 19 March 1972 in Täby) is a Swedish Flash animator whose films have won awards in film festivals and on popular internet sites such as Newgrounds and FWA.

Biography

Ola Schubert, born Ola Bergner, was born in Täby, Stockholm County, Sweden. He spent much of his childhood in Eskilstuna until he became 6 years old, which was when his parents got divorced. He then moved with his mother to Stockholm where he went to elementary school and graduated from the Östra reals gymnasium.

He began having a real interest in drawing only at age 15:

"I started to copy illustrations and paintings. I drew caricatures of my teachers and fellow students. I drew in my books and on the school benches. My teachers became mad and my parents lost their hope. I had found way of life, though it seemed I was the only one who could see it."^[1]

After doing military service at age 20, he enrolled at The Art School in Stockholm at age 22 for a year and continued attending evening courses the following year while working at various jobs during the day. He then started a gallery on Kungsholmen in Stockholm with a friend.

That same year marked a turning point in Ola's life. His sister died of a disease, and directly after this he decided to become a volunteer for a year and help other people. After studying in Denmark for six months, he travelled to Guinea-Bissau, West Africa, for the remainder of the year. After his volunteer period was over, he visited eight other countries in the region, and his experiences there became an inspiration for his later work, as well as a springboard for many future humanitarian projects that he became involved in.

Scene from Gooberstory (2001)

While learning how to create books and folders for educational purposes at the NTI-School in Stockholm, Ola found out about Photoshop and Macromedia Flash, and soon became interested in Flash animation. After graduating, he applied for and got a job as a teacher of animation and digital art at the NTI-School. He also founded Goober Productions, and in 2001 released the 12-minute film Gooberstory, a year in the making and unlike any flash animation in existence at the time. It had a slow pace, used classical music, many revolutionary graphical techniques, and told an epic myth about a great tree and the little fish that thrived in the waters that existed in its shade. It was also heavily influenced by Ola's journey to Africa seven years previous.

Scene from Nim's Winter Tale (2002)

A year later, Ola released Nim's Winter Tale, an 8-minute film which had a much shorter gestation period that Gooberstory - it took only two months to complete because Ola was now much more familiar with the inner workings of Flash. The music for the film was played by harpist Dearbhail Finnegan. The film is an homage to the Tomten, which are Scandinavian gnomes believed to protect farms, care for animals, mend things, and generally look after isolated humans. The best known edition of this story, with which Nim's Winter Tale shares distinct similarities, was written by Astrid Lindgren.

In 2004, Ola started working on Nim's Journey, a feature-length continuation of Nim's Winter Tale. He currently has a website up which documents his progress.

Ola's films reached the widest audience yet when he (under the alias name "Kankuran") released both Gooberstory and Nim's Winter Tale on the flash portal website, Newgrounds, on the same day (3 May 2005]). They won the top five Newgrounds awards that week, and from June 2005 to at least April 2006 ([2]) their creator occupied a place among the five highest-ranked artists on Newgrounds (decided by averaging the ratings of an artist's submissions), at the same level as other flash celebrities like Adam Phillips and James Farr. Thirteen days later, Ola released Sumo the Bambooman, a less ambitious, humorous film starring an African comic hero named "Sumo". Combined, these three films have received over 350,000 views on Newgrounds.

On 1 January 2007, Ola got married and took his wife's surname. He spent the year working at Stockholm Postproduction as a 2D animator. During that time he created a one minute episode of Captain Flame together with his colleague Nicola Smanio. In mid-2007, he decided to use Anime Studio for Nim's Journey instead of Adobe Flash.[3]

As of 2008, Ola is busy with two young daughters, but still finds time to work on his animations. He has finished the storyboards for the first two chapters of his feature film (along with much artwork), and is close to finishing the third.

Filmography

• 1999—A Christmas Tale
• 2000—A Winter Story
• 2001—Gooberstory
• 2002—Nim's Winter Tale
• 2005—Sumo the Bamboo Man
• 2007—Captain Flame

Future projects

• Nim's Journey (a feature film begun 2004)
• H35787 (a short animated film about a lonely robot begun 2005)

Awards

• 2002—2nd place Jury Award in the Linear Category at Flash Award 2002 ([4]) for Gooberstory
• 2003 (28 May)—Nim's Winter Tale wins FWA One award
• 2003 (7 June)—Gooberstory wins FWA One award
• 2003 (10 July)—Gooberstory wins the Story category in Flashforward 2003 in New York; Nim's Winter Tale is nominated.

See also

• Flash cartoon

References

• ^ Ola Schubert. New Masters of Flash: Volume 3. 
• Shortened biography from New Masters of Flash: Volume 3

External links

• Goober Productions - where you can watch Ola Schubert's films.
• Nim's Journey - info, tutorials, and diaries relating to the upcoming feature film.
• Nim's Journey Production Blog
• Goober Message Board - the official forum
• Ola Schubert's movies on Newgrounds

Persondata
Name	Schubert, Ola
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	19 March 1972
Place of birth	Täby
Date of death
Place of death